Set in a dystopian Los Angeles during the last 48 hours of the twentieth century, Kathryn Bigelow’s hyperkinetic, cyberpunk brain-scrambler stars Ralph Fiennes as wiggy, two-bit hustler Lenny, who deals in SQUID, a black-market virtual reality technology that records and transmits experiences directly from one person’s consciousness to another’s. But when he receives a disturbing recording of a sadistic murder, Lenny and his partner (an ass-kicking Angela Bassett) find themselves caught up in a vast conspiracy that touches on racism and police brutality within the LAPD. Politically prescient and stylistically exhilarating, Strange Days deploys Steadicam to eerie effect in the bravura, point-of-view SQUID sequences, using the technology to create a visceral, voyeuristic sensation. An NYFF33 selection.